When comparing Balsamiq vs Adobe XD, the Slant community recommends Balsamiq for most people. In the question“What are the best tools for webapp UX/UI prototyping?”Balsamiq is ranked 5th while Adobe XD is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Balsamiq is:

Balsamiq has a very easy to use drag and drop interface that lets you quickly build and adjust your mockups. The UI is centered around low-fidelity wireframes that help focus the reviews on the core layout and functionality instead of getting hung-up on visual design.

Pros

Pro

Clean and easy to use interface

Balsamiq has a very easy to use drag and drop interface that lets you quickly build and adjust your mockups. The UI is centered around low-fidelity wireframes that help focus the reviews on the core layout and functionality instead of getting hung-up on visual design.

Pro

Large & extensible UI element library

Balsamiq has a built in library of over 75 built-in user interface components and 187 icons, as well as community generated plug-ins.

Pro

Low-fidelity UI elements

All the Balsamiq UI elements are drawn by hand and have a really nice low-fidelity design.

Pro

Awesome team collaboration features

myBalsamiq has been built with teams in mind and has a variety of featured to support collaborating on the mockups:

Notifications - Real-time notifications to enable you to keep track of team member actions

Revision Control - All mockups have a revision history to enable reverting to previous versions and keeping track of design decisions.

Access Control - Access controls allow sharing projects with team members as well as allowing external reviewers to leave comments on the designs.

Pro

Usability testing features

You can link together pages to create shareable user demos

Pro

30-day trial available

Pro

Keyboard shortcuts

You can use common keyboard shortcuts like Shift to select multiple elements or to resize while maintaing proportions, F2 for renaming labels etc.

Pro

Repeat grid is a timesaver

Creating a list of items is simple with "repeat grid." Just create one and use repeat grid to duplicate that item vertically or horizontally. Then drag and drop text or images to create unique entries for each repeated item.

Pro

Interactive mockups

XD allows you to wire any object to any destination page so that clicking a button asset will take you to a page that you specify.

Mockups can also simulate a scrolling page or window.

Pro

Share online and gather feedback

Allows mockups to be pushed to the web where collaborators can try the mockup and leave feedback.

Pro

Easy to use interface

It's easy to be productive immediately with XD but it also includes a demo so that you can learn about some of the more powerful features.

Pro

UI Kits are available for iOS, Material Design, and more

Includes:

iOS

Google Material Design

Windows UWP

Wireframes

Pro

Cross platform

It's available on both macOS and Windows.

Cons

Con

Stifling innovation

Doing anything that is not directly supported by Balsamiq's conservative component library is next to impossible. User is forced to think within the corset of yesterday's standards.

Con

No easy way to quickly play with the product

Con

No password protection on shared mockups

You cannot restrict access to a URL but you can delete it when you're done but then you lose your feedback.

Con

Trial period is only 7 days

There's no free option and the trial period is so short that you may not get the sense of the full power of the app.

Con

Only good for mockups

XD is not a multi-purpose tool like Sketch. It is not a good tool for logos, icons, or other design assets.